Translators and expositors have squirmed over this word trying to give it meaning within our modern framework of understanding.

Their aversion to understanding it as giants/gigantes, as per the pre-Christian Jewish Septuagint translation (LXX),
is quite understandable, but is still not true to its own context, textually and historically.

A factor

that has added to their confusion is the meaning of the term "sons of God" as, in its context, it is related to the cause.

Its use in the book of Job however should remove any doubt that it refers to unborn divine beings which today we call angels,
and the context allows no other possible meaning in Genesis Six.

Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7.

In the context

of Genesis Six, this intrusion is cited as part of the reason for the termination of the whole human race, except for the immediate family of godly Noah.

occurs again in Holy Scripture, after Israel's 430-years in Egypt (Galatians 3:17), describing a later situation among the Canaanites, when Moses led Israel toward Southern Canaan, and their scouting party brought a majority-reported-back which said –

"there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim),
and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them"

Numbers
13:33.

The reason needs to be
properly understood→

Goliath and his brother were direct descendants of refugees from this Anak family of Kiriath-Arba (Hebron), who had settled among the Philistines, after Caleb defeated the mutant giants of Kiriath-Arba. Among them, one is described who had a 12-finger and 12-toe mutation, descended from these same, so the picture we are given is of significant genetic mutation.

So, it is against this background that Israel is commanded by the God of love to massacre all Canaanites –

This was elimination of an intrusive genetic perversion, as had occurred before the Flood of Noah, and had now begun again in parts of Canaan while Israel was in Egypt
as Satan cleverly sought to anticipate God's strategic intentions in Canaan.

In Abraham's time many of the Canaanites were his friends, and he worshipped the Most High God in their Canaanite open-air sanctuaries at Shechem, Mamre, Bethel and at Beersheba, and three of them (Aner, Eshcol, Mamre) even put hemselves at risk to help him rescue his nephew Lot.

The Bible

says that originally when Abraham's father Terah had led his family out of Ur in Chaldea, Abraham did not know where to go (Hebrews 11:8), so it was his act of faith, after the death of his father in Haran, to continue onward...

So,

in God's wisdom, the timing of Abraham's arrival aomong the Canaanites had huge importance, for, although pictographic writing had been developed in the river-valley civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Nile river (putting thoughts/ideas into writing), no one in history had ever developed a way of putting words into writing (alphabetic writing).

subsequent moral deterioration among the Canaanites during the following centuries which led eventually to Nephilic genetic mutation among them, as witnessed by Caleb and the other scouts under Moses, is the whole reason for God calling for their total annihilation, as quoted from Deuteronomy above, as God had also done through the Flood of Noah for the same reason.

In these mutations, size and strength were the most impressive features at that time,
in a world of hand-to-hand fighting, hence the 'giants'.

It

Exodus 23:19; 34:26;
Deuteronomy 14:21.

should be remembered that the moral deterioration in Canaanite/Amorite culture (while Israel was in Egypt) is associated with the Canaanite use of magic in their religious practices in an attempt to manipulate deity. This is whole reason why God prohibited Israel, when it was migrating into Canaan, from "boiling a kid in its mother's milk", which, as shown in the excavated Urgarit tablets of ancient Canaanite culture, was simply a magical ceremony to manipulate God into sending rain, and had nothing at all to do with diet as Jewish Rabbis later came to believe.

The medieval

Rabbinic kosher-misunderstanding of this, as being dietary separation of milk and dairy, would have been prevented if they had read the Bible more carefully and noted how Abraham served meat and dairy together to his special guests (Genesis 18:8). This Canaanite deterioration after Abraham's time into using religion as a manipulative technique had helped open the door to the further perverse corruption

which the timing of Israel's migration encountered in the mutant giants of Kiriath-Arba.

The Anakim.

But,

it has not ended, even if the historical situation has completely changed.

The New Testament tells us that, after Christ's Church comes to spiritual maturity (Ephesians 4:13) and therefore concludes the full evangelism mandate He gave them at its beginning (Matthew 24:14), the Enemy of God's people will then be expelled from entering Heaven's court as Accuser, as he had done against Job, and that then –
in his anger, because he knows that there are therefore only 1260-days left (Revelation 12:12) before Christ takes full authority over the human race,
he will then produce his Master Race sample –

from which a Clone will be made to focus the world's worship and consolidate his influence.

The Bible's teaching about the past is to prepare us for the future.

But here it must be remembered that weapons and technological development means that size and muscle is no longer that impressive, so the ingenuity of Satan will produce that which will be admired from every angle in its modern context

to draw the whole world to admire his slight of hand.

In Jesus, God entered into our flesh-experience with all its limits,
in order to open the way for more than a salvation rescue package,
so that His original design purpose in human existence, of being His image toward all creation, may be fully restored.

The misunderstanding,
that it is a 'messianic title',
arose from not seeing
God's reign in it's symbolic contrast to the empires
portrayed as animals
in Daniel 7:3-14.

For this reason, Christ's favourite reference to Himself was the Hebrew idiom for 'human', namely "son-of-man" (as in Psalm 8:4),
and that has not changed!
...please hear Him!